attention so disproportioned to their military importance. Cabool was one chapter in a transaction which, truly or not, had come to be reputed incompatible with those august principles of public justice professed and worn amongst the phylacteries of Great Britain. Therefore also it was that on this subject, as we have already said, a library of works has been accumulated. [1] _A Great Country's Little Wars_. By HENRY LUSHINGTON. London: Parker, 1844. Of these works we assert, fearlessly but not arrogantly, that all are partially in error. They are in fact, one and all, controversial works; often without the design of the writers, and not always perhaps with their consciousness--but the fact is such. Not one of them but has a purpose to serve for or against Lord Auckland, or Dost Mahommed, or the East India Company, or the government at home and at Calcutta, which replaced that of the Whigs. Some even go into such specialties of partisanship as to manage the cause chiefly as a case depending against the political agents--Mr Ross Bell, Mr Loveday, Captain Outram, or Sir Alexander Burnes. Whilst others, which might seem a service of desperation, hold their briefs as the apologists of that injured young gentleman, Akbar Khan. All, in short, are controversial for a _personal_ interest; and, in that sense, to be controversial is to be partial. Now we, who take our station in the centre, and deliver our shot all round the horizon, by intervals damaging every order of men concerned as parties to the Affghan affair, whether by action, by sanction, by counsel, or by subsequent opinion, may claim to be indifferent censors. We _have_ political attachments: we do not deny it; but our own party is hardly touched by the sting of the case. We therefore can be neutral, and we shall pursue our enquiry thus:--_First_, What was the original motive for the Affghan expedition? We insist upon it, that the motive generally assumed and reasoned upon was absurd, in a double sense puerile, as arguing a danger not possible, and (if it had been possible) not existing, and yet, after all, not open to much condemnation from most of those who _did_ condemn it. They might object to the particular mode of execution, but they were pledged to the principle of a war in that direction.